Page 96 of Modern Romance Collection March 2025 (1-4)

Another infinitesimal stretch of silence and then his eyes pulsed and his nostrils flared in silent acceptance of her wordless condition…followed by another pulse, a resolve that brought the statue fully to life.

In one fluid movement he’d wrapped an arm around her waist and laid her down as if she weighed nothing, pinning her beneath him with a barely restrained force that knocked the little air she had from her lungs.

She stared up at the taut face hovering over her, gazed into the hooded green eyes blazing with a sensuality she felt all the way to her bones, and pleaded with herself to hold on.

‘You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for his,’ he whispered gutturally. And then he bowed his head to her neck.

The ravaging of her delicate skin sent a shock of sensation rippling right down to her toes. Lips and tongue devouring her neck and shoulders as if they were laced with edible sweetness, he slid a hand down her side and between her legs, skimming the heat of her desire with a stifled groan before scraping the tips of his fingers up and over her belly and ribs to cup a breast, and when he rubbed his thumb over a taut peak, she cried out at the pleasure, crying louder when his hungry mouth closed over it.

Greedily, he sucked first one breast then the other, tongue encircling, teeth grazing, tantalising the oh-so-sensitive flesh until the pleasure became so acute it became a form of pain and she was cradling his head and writhing beneath him, moaning helplessly, her moans becoming cries of protest when he abandoned this sensory assault.

But there was no abandonment. Not an inch of her enflamed flesh went untouched. He kissed and stroked every inch of skin, sought every hollow, explored every hidden part before lifting her thighs to kiss her most intimate, feminine part, stroking her inside and out with his tongue and fingers until all sense was abandoned and she was nothing but a coiled flame of hot, sticky need desperate for release.

She’d forgotten, she thought, in the deepest recess of what remained of her consciousness. Forgotten…deliberately…just how painfully, gloriously intense the pleasure had been.

Cruelly, as if sensing she was on the brink, he shifted his attentions away from where the flame burned brightest. Fingers biting into her skin, he caressed his way back up her body, taking a breast almost whole into his mouth with a barely controlled savageness that made her want to weep at the darts of painful pleasure it induced.

Clasping his skull, she scraped her fingers through his hair, and when he brought his face back to hers and his demanding arousal pressed urgently into the top of her thigh, she was a breath away from fusing her lips to his.

It took all her strength to turn and deny herself this, her desperation for his possession of her mouth as acute as her need for his full possession of her. Swallowing hard, she lifted her head and pressed her cheek to his, nuzzling into him, soaking in the musky scent of his skin, fingers dragging over the plane of his chest and abdomen to take hold of him.

He mumbled something unintelligible as she moved her hand up and down the hard velvet length, his groans of pleasure feeding her arousal until the pain became unbearable. Raising her thighs to encircle his hips, she guided him to the place they both desperately needed him to be.

In the beat of a heart, he’d filled her with such completeness it shocked the breath from her lungs.

There was a long moment of stillness before he lifted his head to gaze into her eyes, and suddenly she couldseeit, all the passion and emotions that had been there their one other night together.

Just as suddenly, fear she could barely comprehend gripped her heart, and she pressed her mouth into his neck and closed her eyes, tightening her hold around him as she blocked out everything but the incredible feelings that had taken possession of her, and encouraged him with her body to make love to her.

He withdrew slowly then drove back fully, again and again, over and over. Slow, driven thrusts that she fell into and savoured, the powerfully heady sensations washing away all her fears.

Thiswas what she’d craved. What she needed.

Diaz inside her. A part of her.

Slowly but surely, the tempo increased and her craving grew with it. Rose followed her body’s demands slavishly, holding him tightly and wrapping her legs around his waist, inviting his ever deeper penetration until a groan came from his throat and he lost control, thrusting into her without restraint, driving a rhythm that swept her away on a relentless tide of bliss that had her giving as much as she was taking, aware of nothing but the assent to rapture building with each hard, demanding stroke until she tipped over the edge and shattered into a thousand pieces.

As she clung to his sweat-licked body, clung to the convulsions of ecstasy, he drove into her one final, drawn out time with an agonised cry of her name.

* * *

The descent back to earth took so long Rose had the time to wish to never land back there. To just stay like this, with delicious thrills racing through her veins and the delicious weight of Diaz on top of her, his ragged breath hot against her skin and their hearts beating in perfect heavy unison.

Don’t think like that, the voice of sanity urged.Never think like that.

It didn’t matter what the voice of sanity said though. When Diaz went to move his weight off her, her primal reaction was to clamp her limbs around him to keep him exactly where he was.

He gave a hoarse laugh and kissed her shoulder. ‘I’m going to squash you if I don’t move,’ he said, easily escaping her hold and rolling off onto his side of the bed. When he hooked an arm around her to pull her close to him, her limbs and brain were still too liquid to resist.

For a stretch of time that seemed to pass without beginning or end, she lay replete, tucked in the safety of Diaz’s arms, breathing in the scent of his skin and luxuriating in the feel of his chest against her cheek and the slow strokes of his hand through her hair.

She sighed sleepily when he traced a finger over her cheekbone before shifting his body so they were face to face, still holding each other.

Trailing her fingers over his back, she marvelled at the smoothness and strength, and the way the muscles bunched and flexed at her touch, marvelled that the sensations she experienced at his touch were shared so perfectly and completely.

He pressed the tip of his nose to hers and huskily asked, ‘Am I allowed to kiss you now?’

All the happy, relaxed sensations and thoughts that had filled her disintegrated, and memories of their last post-coital conversation replayed itself with its unerring ability to slice her heart open into a fresh wound.

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